November 26, 2014

It's not about facts, it's just about agitation

For these people at least, using the death of a teenager in Ferguson, MO under unfortunate circumstances (largely of his own doing) seems a perfectly reasonable reason to agitate for other political causes. This is sympathetic to neither the family nor the police, and should be seen as disgusting by everyone with an opinion on this situation.

...The protest had many elements of the Occupy Portland movement, which galvanized protesters in the city and formed a network of people who still communicate via mass text message.

As with Occupy, the vast majority of protesters preached peace, but a fringe group of people — some covering their faces with black bandannas — advocated violence and confrontations with police. And like Occupy, the original protest drew a disparate group of people together, not all of whom agreed with one another.

Military veterans called for peace, a communist group called for the overthrow of capitalism, and a group calling for a Palestinian state all held court during a series of speeches on the steps of the state Justice Center in Portland.

Military veterans calling for peace is vague - does it mean in response to this situation or are they complaining about growing U.S. involvement in Iraq? It's unclear, so I'll let that one slide. But communists advocating the overthrow of capitalism? That's an impossible walk from the Ferguson situation but one they are only too happy to pretend isn't. How will overthrowing capitalism do anything for the Ferguson situation? Capitalism is not at fault here. Either a belligerent hooligan is or a racist police officer is. Even if you believe the latter to be true, capitalism does not foster racism any more or less than any other system. Tell me there are no racists in Russia or China or Cuba and I'll laugh at your premise.

Go home communists, you're crazy.

Palestinians? Really? In a country fraught with nationalistic and religious violence you have no moral authority to claim anything about what's going on in one city in America. Secondly, and more importantly, there is ZERO connection between this and the issues related Palestinian statehood. Got that? Zero. Using this as an excuse to get media face time is morally bankrupt. This is not even about solidarity with supposed victims. Why would you require your community to march or protest as an identifiable group rather than as individuals? In order to throw a reminder out there that the Palestinian issue still exists.

Purposely bending an issue not related to your cause to bring attention to your cause is dishonest, and in many cases, like this one it's repugnant in it's disrespect for all parties concerned.